


on the nature of the universe

by loyaulte_me_lie



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Character Study, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, M/M, Medieval Philosophy Is Also a Fun Time, Moon Landings, Science Nerdery, The Old Guard Go To Space Basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: A thousand years of Joe being a nerd about space.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 34
Kudos: 171





	on the nature of the universe

**Author's Note:**

> So this came out of reading a fantastic meta discussion where someone wanted to see Joe as a mathematician and my brain went, “ASTROPHYSICS!” So yeah. That happened. I don’t think the author of said discussion will ever see this, but marina if you do, it’s for you! In addition, I haven’t tagged it but the Exodus Fleet belongs to Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series (go read it if you haven’t, it’s stunning). The quote at the top also comes from Becky Chambers' novella 'To Be Taught If Fortunate.'
> 
> Thank you also to Marie for the great idea about including the moon landings. 
> 
> T/W: the only thing is like...a mention of armageddon, and since the world is the way it is at the moment i'm putting it here.

> _“I know how much a world can change within the bookends of a lifetime.” -_ **Becky Chambers**

**i.**

Yusuf al-Kaysani’s earliest memory is this: lying on the rug in his father’s small office at the back of the compound and carefully turning the pages of a book of constellations, tracing his finger across words he does not yet know how to read. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t because the pictures are enough: the Big Fish, the Bear, the Cows. Yusuf thinks that it is magical that there are animals made of stars in the night sky, like something out of the stories his oldest sister tells in the courtyard on festival days, her bracelets clattering around her wrists as she orders everyone around.

Later, when his father is done with the accounts, he lets Yusuf climb into his lap and talks to him about the book – about the great men from far away who have studied the stars for years and years. Yusuf falls asleep about halfway through, but he picks it all up as he grows, all this knowledge and love his father has amassed.

His mother’s attitude to the night sky is a lot more practical. Once a year, they get nights of falling stars. When it coincides with Ramadan, she bundles the whole family up into blankets and they break fast on the roof of the house and then lie back to spot the meteors that streak, as quick as a blink, across the face of the night.

“A kiss for each one,” his mother always says, “that’s how it works.”

He and his sisters and cousins fight over who gets her kisses, his bright, beloved mother - until his father invariably pulls rank on all of them. “Husbands first!” he says. “Respect your elders, you young troublemakers!”

Yusuf still remembers this centuries later: the shrieks of laughter, jostling bodies, shouts of “look, another one, another one!” He remembers being newly married, bringing Rawiya to the al-Kaysani starlit iftar, remembers the look on her face when she’d seen her first shooting star – the awe, the wonder at the brilliance of the universe. He’d daydreamed then, just a little, about a clutch of his own children shouting and laughing and disturbing the neighbourhood with their joy.

He thinks that maybe this is where it began.

**ii.**

“ _No,_ Yusuf,” Quynh insists, digging her toes into the side of his leg. The night is warm and sticky, and they are somewhere in the savannah, their campfire set apart from the rest of the army. “It’s the Big Rudder!”

“You are _so wrong,_ ” he says, “it’s the Bear.”

“It doesn’t even look like a bear!”

“Yes it does, you just need to use your imagination!”

“Since when have you mistaken her for someone with one of those,” Andromache cuts in from where she’s shining her knives; they glint silver in the twisting ropes of orange firelight, throw eerie shadows across her face. “Ow, Quynh! Do you _ever_ cut your nails?”

Nicolò, with his face half-buried in the side of Yusuf’s neck, huffs with laughter.

“Why would she give up such a tactical advantage?” he asks, but it comes out mostly as a sleepy mumble, so Yusuf has to translate it into a regular volume for the benefit of the others. It’s funny. All of them are too good with their weapons to ever end up in that kind of desperate fight, but he has less-than-fond memories of the early, murderous years of his and Nicolò’s relationship, of Nicolò trying to scratch out his eyes on more than one occasion. He buries them quickly under thoughts of all the _other_ reasons Nicolò has had cause to scratch him in the last fifty years, all of which are much more pleasurable.

“ _Exactly,_ Nicolò,” Quynh says, smug. “Thank God we have someone sensible around here. Bears in the sky? Honestly.”

Yusuf swears at her in Arabic, and she gives him a pearlescent, sharp-toothed smile.

“Children,” Andromache says, amusedly exasperated. “Whatever happened to peaceful pluralism?”

“Quynh’s inability to drop an argument?” Yusuf suggests, and Quynh leans forward to pinch him too. “Ow, stop that!”

“Not until you admit defeat.”

“No, not happening,” Yusuf says, rising on an elbow to pull a now nearly-fast-asleep Nicolò closer. Quynh narrows her eyes. “I’ve believed in the Bear since I was three years old, I’m not going to stop now.”

“You’re really going to use Nicolò as a human shield?”

“Even you wouldn’t pinch him awake. Look how adorable he is.”

Quynh pouts. “Low blow, al-Kaysani.”

“Whatever it takes to win,” he responds, grinning at the farce of it all, at the ease of this little family he and Nicolò have stumbled into.

“Don’t pinch my husband,” Nicolò rouses himself to contribute, and then sighs and tightens his arm around Yusuf’s chest. Yusuf presses a kiss to the crown of Nicolò’s head, adjusts the bundled up cloak underneath him, and lies down again.

“Only for you Nicolò, em trai,” Quynh sighs and flops backwards into Andromache’s lap, narrowly avoiding the knives. Andromache puts them aside, and begins to wind her fingers through Quynh’s hair.

“So,” he says conversationally after a while, tracing the hazy outlines of the constellations. It occurs to him that the books he learned from are probably still lining the shelves of his father’s old study - if the house is still standing. “What do you think is at the centre of the universe, Quynh?”

“Me, of course,” Andromache answers and Yusuf bursts out laughing.

**iii.**

The house is small and smoky, and outside the winding is howling threats and hammering fists of rain against the roof. It doesn’t matter, particularly, because inside it is warm and Jose and Nicolas are bundled into blankets on the floor in front of the fire, lazy and indolent after most of the day in bed. It’s a rare respite from what is quickly becoming a brutal invasion, their distraction from Quynh’s aching loss crumbling to dust around their ears.

“We need something different,” Nicky had said this time last year as they’d embarked on a Spanish ship, pretending to be going along with the conquistadors. “Somewhere different.”

“We’re still failing,” Andrea had spat three mornings ago, pulling her cloak tighter around herself like a shield. “What’s the fucking point? The Mapuche have lost whether we’re here or not.”

She’d slammed the door after that, disappeared into the rain to talk hopeless battle plans and sabotage attempts with local leaders. Jose and Nicolas hadn’t followed and she hasn’t come back. Jose thinks he will not be surprised if she doesn’t for a few years, if she takes space from them to grieve. He knows Nicolas has spoken to her about it, hopes that she knows they won’t mind. 

Andrea or no Andrea, they will stay to see the end of the invasion, to help the Mapuche in whatever way they can, but today is a storm day and a respite for everyone, an excuse to breathe before the next battle, the next bloody dawn. Nicolas is carving something with his knife that he won’t let Jose look at. It’s probably for one of the children in the village. He is humming a local folk song under his breath, and his feet are warm in Jose’s lap. Jose turns a page of the book he has balanced on top of them, a book he’d stolen from a dead invader; he traces a finger across the diagrams, breathes through his sudden, swelling excitement.

When he reaches the end, he goes back to look at the evidence again, to reconstruct the geometry in his head. It works, just, is daring and audacious and has probably ruffled a lot of feathers back in Europe but the European establishment and its intellectual prudishness can go to hell as far as he’s concerned. He shakes his head, whistles through his teeth.

“And?” Nicolas asks. He doesn’t look up from his task, but Jose knows he’s listening intently. “What’s the verdict?”

“It’s irritating that the Europeans will claim this discovery for themselves when Islamic scholars have done a lot of the grounding work,” Jose says after a second. “He references a few of them, but the Maragha school have done much more than he gives them credit for. Then again, this _is_ the first manuscript that explicitly puts the sun at the centre of the universe, so…”

“More convincing than that Germanic cardinal’s theory?”

“Nicolaus Cusanus?”

“I think so. What was his idea again?”

“That the universe doesn’t actually have a centre, like God. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that one.”

“I was a little distracted,” Nicolas says, glances up, the smallest smirk dancing around his mouth.

“You were a little distract _ing,_ ” Jose corrects and Nicolas’ smile widens before he ducks his head back to his figurine. Jose had read Cusanus’ work at the end of the last century and held forth on it so extensively that Nicolas had become bored enough to start kissing him whenever he’d tried to open his mouth. Nicolas will listen to Jose go on for days about whatever has taken Jose’s interest, but even he has limits – and the labyrinthine scholarly back and forth on the nature of the universe is one of them. “Cusanus was much more philosophical. This is geometry. He has observations.”

“Observations. How wonderful,” Nicolas says dryly, puts down his paring knife. “Want to tell me more?” Then, at Jose’s raised eyebrow, “I like listening to you talk about it.”

“You said you didn’t understand.”

“Does that matter? You do. And perhaps one day they’ll invent a way of explaining it all that doesn’t involve so much _mathematics._ ” Nicolas’ voice has taken on a petulant edge, and Jose laughs.

“Oh mathematics, God forbid.”

“They are, I think, humanity’s worst invention.”

Jose laughs again, and then closes the book, puts it aside. “I’ll find a way to explain it if they don’t,” he says, “just for you, ya amar.”

Nicolas leans in and kisses him for that, long and lazy and slow, and Jose kisses him back, breathes through the feeling that always overtakes him whenever they touch, whenever he’s reminded how blessed he is to have Nicolas here, to have Nicolas’ steady. unyielding love. Nicolas draws back after a while, his blue eyes very serious.

“I’ll hold you to it,” he says. “Don’t forget.”

**iv.**

The party swirls and tinkles around him in a haze of rustling dresses, polite scholarly one-upmanship and champagne. Joseph lost Adrianna to an intense discussion about colonialism with their target over an hour ago. He can still see her standing by the door and keeping the man from leaving. Idly, he swirls his glass, glances down into the bubbles; he wishes he could be with Nicholas and Booker, robbing the man’s house for information about the trafficking operation he masterminds. It is stifling in here, all the crème de la crème of American academia giving him side-eyes as Adrianna’s supposed rich, foreign husband. The number of women wearing clothes inspired by the romanticised hype for the ‘exotic East’ popularised in Paris this last decade isn’t helping either; he wants to tell them that women dress quite sensibly where he’s from, that the Ottoman Empire isn’t all A Thousand and One Nights.

He takes another breath and tries to be grateful for the change of pace. Until now it’s been war after war after war – France, South Africa, and the Philippines, atrocities on every side, and now the big European empires are starting to rattle their swords at one another yet again. Their craving for power and wealth just seems childish to him at this point, and he wishes he could stop the march of history, could spirit Nicholas, Adrianna and Booker off somewhere beautiful for a year without any other _people_ around to get in their way, with space to breathe, to _rest._

After glancing over to Adrianna again, who doesn’t yet look like she needs an extraction, he slips out of the half-open French windows behind him, takes a deep breath of warm August air. He wonders whether he’ll be able to see the same meteors he used to as a child this far north, wanders over to the edge of the terrace before he realises that someone else is already there. She turns as he approaches – a white woman, grey-haired and slight, dressed in sensible navy blue satin with a black shawl draped over her shoulders, not a hint of high fashion in sight. He likes her for that alone. Belatedly, he realises she’d been in a group he’d been introduced to. He doesn’t remember her name.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realise there was anyone else out here.”

“Not at all, Mr Kaysani,” she says. Her accent is American and she smiles politely. “Needed a break?”

“Yes,” Joseph says, too quick, and her smile widens, amused. “Also, I wanted to see if I could spot any of the Perseids tonight, but I don’t think it’s late enough yet.”

“Oh I’ve seen two or three,” she tells him. “But the peak is in a couple of nights time, so I don’t expect a deluge.”

“You’re a stargazer too?”

“I’m an astronomer, young man. It comes with the job description.” Her voice has taken on a stern cant, as though she’s used to playing the professor, defending herself against men not taking her seriously.

“Wow,” he says. “What are you working on?”

“Primarily stellar brightness,” she says, softening at the obvious enthusiasm that must be showing on his face. “I’ve been working on a certain class of star that has variable brightness, and trying to figure out what the regularity of it all is. I recently published some work suggesting they’ve all got a standard variation _in_ brightness, but I still need to finish compiling all the evidence to be sure.”

“Wait,” he says, thinking back to just this morning and the arrival of the latest astronomical gazette Nicholas had subscribed him to for the duration of their stay in the United States, “you’re Miss H.S. Leavitt?”

She blinks. “Yes. I am.”

“I’ve read some of your papers,” he says. “Or the summaries, at least.” Then, at her questioning look, “I’m an amateur enthusiast, I suppose you’d say. My h…wife subscribed me to a gazette the other month.”

“Well that’s flattering,” she says, suddenly warm. “What did you think?”

Joseph matches her smile. “I just think its remarkable that stars can be classified and measured like that! Do you know what could be done with the data?”

“There is an astronomer in Copenhagen using my work to try and measure the distance to a group of these stars,” she says. “I’m yet to hear his results, but he promised to write to me before he published.”

“That’s incredible,” he says.

“I hope it will be,” she responds, then, “oh look!”

He turns his head to see the tail of another shooting star dissolve into nothing. By mutual, silent agreement, they both turn their attention back to the night sky, and Joseph thinks suddenly of his mother, of their old traditions, of his long-dead wife, of Nicholas, of the joy of turning someone’s face to the beauty of the heavens.

After a while, he hears the footsteps and the rustle of silk on paving stones before Miss Leavitt does, turns to see Adrianna making her way towards them, holding her peach skirts up around her ankles. Nicholas had helped her choose the dress, and get dressed in it tonight – she’d griped something horrible about modern expectations of femininity and lack of access to her weapons.

“Why can’t Joseph and Nicholas go together?” he’d overheard her asking either Booker or the ceiling. “Why must American society be so unhelpfully anti-queer?”

Neither Booker nor the ceiling had answered her. Now, she looks just as irritated as she had earlier, but quickly catches sight of Miss Leavitt and smooths her expression out into the one Joseph recognises as ‘I’m being charming for the mortals but just you _wait_.’

“There you are, darling,” she says in her very thick and very fake American accent. Joseph tucks his amusement away before she sees it and stabs him in retribution later. “We have to go if we’re going to catch Sebastien at his club.”

That’s the signal that Booker and Nicholas are done raiding the mark’s house. Joseph sighs in relief that this endless, inane night is over – that they can go back to the safehouse and breathe for a while.

“Duty calls,” he says to Miss Leavitt, bows a little. “I’ll continue to follow your work with great interest, Miss Leavitt. Best of luck with it.”

She smiles properly, dips her head. “Thank you. Good luck with your business interests, Mr Kaysani.”

Adrianna tucks her hand into Joseph’s elbow, practically drags him from the hall, her pleasant expression dissolving the second they’re out of sight.

“That bad?” he asks once they’re safely on the street.

She squeezes his arm. “I really feel like we’re doing the world a favour with this one, Joe.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it’s clear-cut for once,” he says, knocks his shoulder gently against hers and lets her route-march him back in the direction of the safehouse. Booker and Nicholas have beat them there – Booker with a mug of something steaming at his elbow, already surrounded by mountains of papers, and Nicholas pacing lazily back and forth with a notebook in his hand, reading something off it in heavily accented French. At their entrance, he looks up.

“How was the party, tesoro?” he asks.

“Joseph found an astronomer,” Adrianna says, ripping the turban from her head and flinging it in the direction of the chaise longue. “How do you think it went?”

“Ah.” Nicholas gives him an indulgent smile. “Who was it?”

“I’m going to change,” Adrianna interrupts before Joseph can say anything. “And we have work to do. He can babble to you about her later.”

“Yes, boss,” Nicholas says, and Adrianna stamps upstairs. He slides his hand into Joseph’s, pulls him down opposite Booker, reaches for the teapot. Joseph smells mint and sugar, briefly leans his head against Nicholas’ shoulder.

“We saw five meteors,” he whispers in Arabic into Nicholas’ ear, taking some of the papers Booker shoves at him.

“I hope you saved the kisses for me,” Nicholas whispers back, and Joseph smiles, brings Nicholas’ hand up to his mouth and kisses each of his knuckles, one after the other.

**v.**

“Ok,” Booker calls up the stairs of the apartment block, “switch it on, boss!”

Joe squeezes Nicky’s hand tightly as Andy leans forward to press the button on their television set. It crackles and flickers for a few seconds before finding the right signal; the American-sponsored South Vietnamese news programme judders into life on the screen. They hear Booker’s footsteps echoing on the concrete and then he appears, shutting the door behind him and picking his way through the families crowded on the floor of their apartment to come and flop onto the sofa. Joe shuffles over to loop his free arm around Booker’s shoulders and Booker catches his hand. Andy curls her legs over all of their laps.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says in Italian to all of them, mindful of the listening ears. Joe thinks that everyone is too excited by what’s about to happen on the TV to pay them any attention, but it never hurts to be too cautious. “Who would have thought it?”

“I know, right?” Joe says, trying to keep his voice down. He knows that if he allowed his volume to match his excitement he’d probably shatter the eardrums of everyone in the room.

“Aren’t you glad of his obsession with astronomy now,” Booker asks her and she rolls her eyes, laughs. “I’m glad he found out in time for us to get the aerial set up.”

“It _is_ rather nice to be watching history from a sofa,” Nicky says after a second, tipping his head against Joe’s. “Makes a refreshing change.”

They all make noises of agreement, and then get shushed by the matriarch of the block, who is seated queenlike on a stool right in front of the screen. The image fades into grainy footage – a flat expanse of sand, the edge of something mechanical, a figure in a bulky white suit with glass over its face like the eye of a giant insect. Joe’s heart is pounding. Both Booker and Nicky’s fingers have tightened on his own, and nearly as one they lean forward as the alien figure announces in stentorian American tones: “this is one small step for man, but one giant leap for mankind.”

“He went for _that,_ ” Booker says. “No way.”

“It’s poetic,” Nicky protests. Then, “sort of.”

“They could have been more original.”

“Maybe it just came out without thinking.”

“Hmm,” Booker agrees. “Maybe he has control issues.”

“So would you if you were on the _moon_.”

“I feel there’s a general lack of gravity about this entire situation,” Joe says through his enormous, painful smile. Booker elbows him in the ribs. “Ow, uncalled for.”

“That was a horrific pun, you’re the worst.”

“Shut up, assholes, you’re ruining the moment,” Andy says and Joe glances over to her, at the split-open expression on her face that she’s not even bothering to hide. He knows that they are all thinking the same thing – that this moment has come completely out of the blue, that they have all lived for centuries and thought they knew the long and short of humanity by now, that maybe – just maybe – humanity still has the capacity to surprise them.

Tomorrow, he’s sure, the war will begin again. But right now they’re lost in the grainy images being played over and over, the knowledge that millions of miles above their heads, two American astronauts have changed the course of history.

**vi.**

Booker is late for the rendezvous, and everyone is getting twitchy.

“Just give him ten more minutes,” Nicky says, but even he is tapping his fingers against the sticky, grimy tabletop. The pub they are in is bustling, full of late-season tourists come to check out the old writing haunt of several famous English authors. “He might just have had to detour.”

“He should have been fine,” Andy insists.

“We did plan this down to the last second,” Joe points out, trying for patience.

“No plan survives first encounter with the enemy,” Nicky says, completely ignoring Joe’s attempt to remain calm.

“I know,” Joe says, “but still. He’s not a baby anymore. He’ll be fine.”

Andy runs a hand through her newly-short hair, glowers into the drink she hasn’t touched. “I’m going to wring his bloody neck.”

“Are you now?” Booker asks, sliding into the seat next to them. His hair is damp and his collar is speckled with rain. “Sorry. Our contact’s legit, by the way, but I spotted several foreign agents hanging around. I had to be careful.”

“Why did you linger, then?” Andy snaps.

Booker shrugs, apparently unbothered, but Joe sees the way his brows briefly dent together. “I didn’t.”

“Then-”

“I walked past that big bookshop down the end of Broad Street and had to pop in,” he says, pulls a slim volume out of his jacket and slides it across the table to Joe. “Saw this in the window. Since you’ve been going on about the guy so much I figured you might like to read his new book.”

“In the middle of a _mission,_ Book?” Andy says, exasperated now more than anything. “Really?”

“The foreign agents now think I’m a harmless tourist with an interest in astrophysics,” Booker shoots back, and she subsides, muttering something under her breath in a very old, very dead language.

“Guys, calm down, it’s not a big deal,” Joe hears Nicky say, but he’s too busy flipping through the pages of _A Brief History of Time,_ marvelling at how nice books are getting these days, at the sturdy weight of the paper. He reads the first few sentences before he hears his name again, looks up to see Booker studying him intently.

“Any good?”

“I think it will be,” Joe says. “Thanks, Book, that was kind of you.”

“No worries. I know you like to keep up to date,” Booker says and smiles properly, the way he so rarely does when they’re out in public. Joe grins back.

Andy groans. “You’re going to be unbearable about this for weeks, aren’t you?”

“Hawking’s research into space-time singularities is not _unbearable_ ,” Joe objects at the exact same time Booker says, “we all have to expand our horizons, Andy.”

Nicky is making the face Joe recognises as strongly-suppressed laughter, looking between them all. Andy rolls her eyes. “Is six thousand years not expansive enough for you, asshole?”

“Hmm, no,” Booker says, mock-serious. “Apologies. You’re nothing but a gnat to the universe.”

“What does that make you?” Nicky asks, tone mildly curious.

“A gastrotrich,” Booker tells him. “Mud critters. They live for a week.”

“Wow, slimy,” Joe says.

“You’re all assholes,” Andy says, nudges Joe with the tip of her boot. “Joe, give Nicky the book until the mission’s over. I know what you’re like.”

“Nothing other than highly professional, boss,” Joe says, mock-hurt, frowning at her until she starts to laugh. Nicky slips the book out of Joe’s hand and disappears it somewhere underneath his coat. “Speaking of, I saw the advert for a ghost tour earlier. We should do that when we’re done.”

“Yes,” Nicky says. “That would be fun. Let’s do it.”

“Only if this goes down well,” Andy says.

Booker groans. “You’re all bonkers.”

“Aw, love you too Book,” Joe says, gets up and pulls Booker to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go see how haunted Oxford is.”

**vii.**

Nile is lying flat on her stomach on the roof of a derelict apartment building in Durban, the sun beaming furiously down at her. The binoculars she’s trying to use to look into the warehouse opposite keep slipping out of her sweaty hands, so she stops for a few seconds to wipe her eyes, yawn, take a drink of water. She’s been here for nearly eleven dragging hours and is bored out of her _mind._ Doing all the spying and intelligence work is usually Copley’s job and usually remote, but there aren’t any security cameras in this part of town for him to hack into. Hence: reconnaissance of the warehouse they’re sure the hostage is being kept in, though good luck finding any evidence. Nile hasn’t seen a soul since the one homeless person this morning.

Out of nowhere, her earpiece crackles to life. “Hey Nile,” Joe’s voice says into her ear. “Want some good news?”

“Is it that I can get down off this godforsaken roof,” she asks, sharper than she’d like. “This feels like a dead end.”

“Andy’s on her way,” he says, “but she and Copley are checking something out first.” Then, “this will distract you from your misery until they get there?”

“Ok,” she says, warily. She’s been on the receiving end of what Joe and Nicky term ‘good news’ a number of times since she joined the team. To give them due credit, sometimes it is genuinely good news – people electing a decent leader, or a ceasefire, or a progressive law getting passed. Most of the time, however, it’s a cat video compilation or a bizarre dance fad one of them has unearthed from a dark, spidery corner of the internet. Once, Joe woke her at dawn to inform her very seriously that woolly bear moth larvae die and resurrect themselves to survive freezing winters; this was apparently supposed to make her feel better about the fact that their precarious safehouse in a very snowy Moscow had been compromised and they had to leave.

Sometimes they are just trolling her, but it’s always with the aim of making her laugh. She’s painfully grateful for how much effort they put into making her feel included, into making her feel like family despite the fact the others have known each other for centuries, into distracting her from everything she’s lost.

“They just released the first image of a black hole!”

“He saw it on the Twitter,” she hears Nicky say in the background, grins to herself the way she always does when she hears Nicky talk about social media. He always insists on calling it “the Twitter”, has feigned deafness when she tried to correct him. She's given up on it now, figures that after nine hundred years he’s earned the right to call it whatever the hell he wants. Once, out of idle curiosity, she’d asked the pair of them what they’d thought of the internet.

“Apart from useful?” Joe had said. “It’s people being people, isn’t it? Everything is just sped up to a truly ridiculous level.”

“Like that post on the Tumblr you showed us about the supersonic bear,” Nicky had added very seriously. “That describes the last century’s technological advancement perfectly.”

Now, Nile puts her eyes back to her binoculars, hopes Andy hurries the hell up. She doesn’t really know what to say to the news about the black hole, but Joe sounds so genuinely delighted she’s going to put the odds on this not being a troll attempt. “That’s cool.”

“It’s forty billion km across!”

“Seriously?”

“That is a big number.”

“It _is_. It’s amazing. People are amazing. I can’t believe they finally photographed one!”

“I didn’t realise you were such a space-nerd,” Nile tells him, spotting a shadow darting around the corner of the end of the street, seeing the flash of Andy’s red signal.

“A space-nerd?”

“Someone who obsesses over space,” Nile says, packing up her gear and she hears Nicky’s voice crackle back into the background, fervent.

“Now I finally have a _word_ for it after all these years. Nile, you’re the _best._ ”

“You say that like being a space-nerd is a contagious disease,” Joe complains.

“It _is._ ”

“You’re the one who wanted an understandable explanation!”

“And now I’m infected too!”

“Guys,” Nile laughs, rolls her eyes and crawls to the access ladder. Then, before she can stop herself, “I love you both so much.”

“Love you too,” Nicky says easily back. “I’ve got rice and peas on the stove for when you get home.”

**viii.**

Even six weeks later, the viewing deck at the back of the ship is still bustling. Joe weaves through the crowd towards the reinforced plexiglass, Nicky’s hand firmly in his. Earth is nothing but a pale blue dot amongst hundreds of others; he couldn’t pick it out now if he tried, and tried he has, every day, over and over. Nicky has stood quietly with him, head against Joe’s shoulder and waiting for the reality to sink in that Earth is gone, and it’s never coming back. Joe didn’t really believe that they would all have to go like this, to leave Andy’s remains and over a thousand years of memories with the burning carcass of their planet, but now he’s finally letting himself come to the conclusion that it’s probably all for the best. 

“I wish Andy were here to see all of this,” he says after a while. Nicky lifts his head from Joe’s shoulder, wraps an arm around his waist. “To see what it all looks like from the other side.”

“She would have loved it,” Nicky replies quietly.

“She’d had groaned so much.”

“Only at your overexcited explanations of everything. Though Booker is almost as bad for the technology,” Nicky huffs. “And anyway, the cynicism was such a front towards the end.”

“Yeah.” Joe sighs. “I’m really glad she didn’t have to see how bad it all got, you know? I’m glad she was spared that.”

“Me too, love.”

They watch the stars gliding by for a bit, retrieve a ball for a toddler oblivious to the immensity of the history being made under its tiny, wobbly feet, and then head back to the hex they had been assigned upon coming aboard the Asteria. It’s all very socialist and egalitarian – six families to a hex, six hexes to a neighbourhood, everyone coming together to make the fleet work. Everyone has had to knuckle down in order to survive; they’ve left capitalism and inequality behind on the ravaged Earth and amongst the rich that fled to Mars.

Booker and Nile are cooking the neighbourhood's dinner in the communal kitchen, surrounded by planters full of new green growth. Joe catches the flash of their wedding rings. It’s been nearly a century, but the sight of Booker brushing his fingers across Nile’s cheek and her soft smile in response still makes Joe beam. He’s so glad that Booker had found his peace, glad that he and Nicky got to watch their friends falling in love, inch by inch by inch.

Quynh is sitting in her rocking chair by the door to their family quarters, entertaining several small children gathered at her feet whilst their parents work. Nicky has already gone to help the others, so Joe goes over to Quynh and adjusts her blanket, kisses her forehead in greeting, and settles down with the children. Some of the younger ones clamber into his lap and he wraps his arms around them to hold them steady as Quynh keeps talking, her voice rising and falling with the waves of the story she’s telling. She’d stopped healing twenty years before they’d left, and the end days of the Earth had taken its toll on her more than the others. Joe can count the grey in her hair, the stiffness in her limbs, and he wonders how long it will be before Quynh’s days are up.

She says she doesn’t mind, that she’ll be with Andy again. Joe will miss her – her vicious humour, her righteous stubbornness – but he knows that it is for the best.

He tips his head to the plant-filled ceiling, and the layers of metal between him the stars. Worlds ending is always a terrifying experience, but the five of them have done it before and they’ll do it again. Perhaps this time humanity will finally find peace. Maybe they will all get to put down their swords. Maybe the children in his lap will get to grow up in a world free of violence and pain and fear. He closes his eyes and murmurs an old prayer under his breath and hopes that the universe will listen.

**ix.**

When they all get found by an alien space probe five years later, Nile turns to Joe and says: “I can’t believe you didn’t foresee the possibility of aliens, Mr I Know Everything About Space!”

“Excuse you, the chance was one in sixty _billion_!” he protests. “That’s horrific odds.”

“Not if you count faster than light travel,” Booker says.

“That’s science-fiction!”

“So are aliens,” Nile flops over so she’s draped half across her husband and half across Joe’s midsection. He pats the top of her head gingerly and she pulls a face up at him.

“The universe is weird and inexplicable, and no-one will ever understand the true nature of it,” Nicky declares, rolling over to join the cuddle pile. “How about we leave it at that?”

**Author's Note:**

> em trai (Vietnamese) – little brother, ya amar (Arabic) – my moon/my most beautiful, tesoro (Italian) - treasure.  
> And the bear meme Nicky refers to is [this beauty](https://linktoo.tumblr.com/post/127194528902/the-entire-furry-fandom-ww-swagabond)
> 
> Notes for the nerds: the book Joe is reading in section i. is al-Sufi's The Book of Fixed Stars, which catalogued and expanded on Ptolemy's Almagest, which put the earth at the centre of the universe in scientific thought for centuries. al-Sufi was Persian and one of the major contributors to the translation of Greek astronomy into Arabic, especially the work that had been done around Alexandria by people like Ptolemy. 
> 
> Later on in section three, Joe is reading Nicholas Copernicus' book "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" which basically made the case for a total shift in the way the universe was viewed (although Islamic astronomers had done similar critiques of Ptolemy before, and Copernicus built on those). The Maragha School Joe mentions were a group of 13th century Islamic astronomers who basically ironed out all the kinks in Ptolemy's model of the universe, and their critiques were pretty important for the Copernican Revolution.
> 
> Lastly, Miss Henrietta Swan Leavitt was an American astronomer and her work focussed on what we now call Cepheid Variables, whose brightness varies on a fixed cycle. Because of this, they were the first to be used as "standard candles" which is an astrophysics term for a stellar object with a known absolute brightness that can be used to measure distance. 
> 
> Come scream at me on Tumblr:@if-fortunate.


End file.
